Viewability (Tactic Editor)


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Use the Viewability tab in the Tactic Editor to select your viewability options. Viewability refers to whether the impressions that the tactic won appeared on the screen and could be seen. There are different standards for determining how to calculate viewability—when you use this feature, select the standard that you want to follow.

Page position options are also available on the Viewability tab in the Tactic Editor, but you don’t need to measure viewability for them to take effect. See the Page Position section of this page for more information.

Providers

The DSP is integrated with the following providers for measuring viewability:

  • DoubleVerify

  • Pixalate

Pixalate doesn’t support viewability measurements for video ads. For native ads, viewability is only available with TripleLift, Nativo, and Sharethrough, and only if the ad is hosted in Basis DSP. We cannot provide any viewability metrics for native ads that you generate with TripleLift Creative Wizard, because those ads are uploaded to the DSP as display tags. However, you are still charged the CPM fee if you try to track viewability for these types of ads.

Standards

There are different standards for determining what counts as a viewable ad. Available standards vary by provider.

Standard Provider Display Video
IAB - Desktop

Pixalate

DoubleVerify

Ads are considered viewable if at least 50% of the pixels appear on screen for at least 1 second. Larger ads (those greater than 242,000 pixels) are considered viewable if at least 30% of the pixels appear on screen for at least 1 second.

 At least 50% of the pixels appear on screen for at least 2 seconds.
IAB - Mobile DoubleVerify At least 50% of the pixels appear on screen for at least 1 second. At least 50% of the pixels appear on screen for at least 2 seconds.
GroupM DoubleVerify 100% of the pixels appear on screen for at least 1 second. 100% of the pixels appear on screen for at least half of the ad’s duration, with audio on, if the video was actively started by the user.
PMX DoubleVerify 100% of the pixels appear on screen for at least 1 second. 100% of the pixels appear on screen for at least 2 seconds.

Measuring Viewability

When measuring viewability for tactics, you must select a provider and a standard that defines whether the ad was viewable. This feature measures post-bid viewability, and you can use it with or without pre-bid viewability solutions through other data partners.

Changing viewability settings while the campaign is running may result in data discrepancies in analytics and reports.

To measure viewability for a tactic’s impressions:

  1. Go to the Tactic Editor:

    1. Select Main Menu [] > Campaigns.

    2. Select the campaign and media plan.

    3. From the tactic's Options [], select Edit.

  2. On the Viewability tab, turn on Measure Viewability.

  3. Select the Provider:

    • DoubleVerify: Measures viewability for display ads ($0.12 CPM fee) and video ads ($0.20 CPM fee). Fees are waived if the tactic also uses DoubleVerify viewability brand protection segments.

    • Pixalate: Measures viewability for display ads ($0.03 CPM fee). Viewability tracking for VAST and video creatives is not currently available through Pixalate.

  4. After selecting the provider, select the standard to define how viewability is determined:

    • IAB

    • GroupM

    • PMX

    Available standards vary depending on the selected provider.

  5. Review the tactic’s viewability settings on the Tactic Summary tab and save when finished.

Viewability Metrics

The following metrics are available when viewability is turned on:

  • Total eligible impressions: Number of impressions for which there was an attempt to measure viewability.

  • Total measured impressions: The number of impressions for which viewability was measured. Some factors can prevent viewability from being measured for every eligible impression. For example, if the tactic has 500 eligible impressions and viewability could not be determined for five of them, the total measured impressions would be 495.

  • Total viewable impressions: The number of impressions that were determined to be viewable. The definition of a viewable impression depends on the standard selected for the tactic.

  • Measured rate: How often the ads for the tactic were able to be measured, presented as a percentage using the following formula: (total measured impressions / total eligible impressions) * 100. For example, if the tactic has 495 total measured impressions and 500 eligible impressions, the measured rate is 495/500 = 99%

  • Viewable rate: How often the ad appeared on screen and could be seen by the user, presented as a percentage using the following formula: (total viewable impressions / total measured impressions) * 100. For example, if the tactic has 410 total viewable impressions and 495 measured impressions, the measured rate is 410/495 = 82.83%.

  • Eligible spend: Total spend on eligible impressions.

  • Eligible vCPM: Eligible spend per thousand viewable impressions, calculated with the following formula: (total spend for all eligible impressions * 1000 / total viewable impressions.)

Optimizing for Viewability

Use machine learning optimization (MLO) to optimize tactics for viewability rate or viewable CPM, or manually optimize live tactics for domains, placements, and exchanges that are meeting your viewability goals. See Optimizing a Tactic for more information.

When you select a viewability goal type for MLO, Measure Viewability automatically turns on for the tactic, and you can’t turn it off while that MLO goal is selected or while the tactic is being optimized. You must select the viewability provider and standard on the Viewability tab to finish setting up the tactic. If you later change the goal to a KPI that doesn’t require viewability, make sure to turn Measure Viewability off so that you don’t get charged a CPM fee.

Page Position

Page position options control where the ad appears on the screen:

  • Above the fold (ATF) refers to the area that's immediately visible on screen when the page loads without scrolling.

  • Below the fold (BTF) refers to the area of the page that the user must scroll to see.

  • Unspecified refers to placements that don’t declare page position. Many pages fall into this category, so excluding unspecified positions could severely limit the number of available impressions.

These options impact tactic targeting even if Measure Viewability is turned off.